Could a loving God create death before man sinned?

It is obvious that this world is created for a purpose. The Creator cannot be known at all in this universe by our five natural senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and sound except for His Word. This is the only place on Planet Earth that God reveals the most important aspects of Himself to those created in His image. In fact, Scripture teaches us that the natural man cannot know God. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Now through the ages, He has used other means such as oral traditions. He also used people that He gave power to such as the prophets and preachers. He also used the descendants of Abraham to reveal more of Himself to the world. This all culminated in these last times in Jesus Christ and the final canonization of His Word. At one time, God did overlook this ignorance in man, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. (Acts 17:30)

Further God has an enemy and that enemy has been sinning for some time before creation. So the first sin to enter God's realm was not man's sin, but satan's sin.

It is evident from the fact that Scripture tells us that Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world, (Revelation 13:8) that God was aware of satan's sin issues and the fact that he could deceive us to sin. Consequently, God devised a strategy to create beings with the ability to choose and He allowed them to be tempted by satan knowing the potential that they could fall. Yet their failure is actually the basis of God's success in removing this wicked evil being from His presence for eternity in hell's fire.

Jesus tells us this here:

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’? If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. John 10:34-38

I believe what Jesus is saying here is that it is possible for God to be made man because man is like God. We are like little images of God walking around here. He says we are gods. This is not in the sense that we should be worshipped or be God, but that we are like miniatures of God. (Genesis 3:22)

This is important because God used us to defeat His enemy. Our failure may have seemed like a huge mistake, but it wasn't. God was able to use us, in the Person of Jesus Christ, by using the likeness of sinful human flesh and by living a normal human life under the same conditions any other human would live, be tempted in the same ways any other human would be tempted, but without capitulating to sin in His heart; and then He laid down His life for us by dying on a Roman cross. He was without sin. He was a fully blameless human being. In that way, He was a Lamb without spot or blemish.

This is a key point to being a Christian. If you believe that Jesus came here with omnipotence and omniscience, then you have a false understanding of what it is that He did. The central part of His being remained in heaven so that while He was here, He lived as a human would live praying to His Father in heaven. Both the Son and the Spirit were on this planet at the same time in the Person of Jesus Christ. Further, the Spirit was working through John the Baptist at that time. He was also working in Mary, Joseph, Anna and Simeon and several others.

This cannot be overemphasized. John said twice that if you do not believe that Jesus came in the flesh, you are antichrist. (1 John 4:3, 2 John 1:7) Every form of false religion, besides the fact that they exude rotten fruit, demonstrates that they have this commonality: they do not believe that Jesus Christ came fully human. Jehovah's Witnesses and Islam have that same basis. They do not believe that God Almighty could come to this earth as a man. Mormons have a twisted view on this as well in that they do not believe that God Almighty came to this earth fully man. Now some that you might not have considered that also fall prey to this are Calvinists and Catholics. You may ask how I could say that. The reason is because their doctrinal position is that being a man is sin. We are all born with Adam's sin. Thus, they would say that Jesus had God as His Father and did not have that sin. The Bible says that Jesus was of the seed of David and goes to great lengths to list His sordid lineage. (Romans 1:3, 2 Timothy 2:8, Luke 3:23-38) Not to mention that Ezekiel 18 totally tosses out the idea that we are held accountable for anyone else's sin but our own.

How does this relate to death? The laws of physics necessary to cause death had to be in play from the creation of the world as is clearly seen there, for God's plans and purposes to be fulfilled. It was His plan all along to defeat satan personally through a man. Romans 8 tells us that the whole creation has been suffering since the beginning because God subjected it to suffering.

This all happens too so that we can be redeemed. We are still responsible for the choices we made all along. Hence, God also loved the whole world and died for us to make a way for us to spend eternity with Him.

Oh the depths of the riches and wisdom of God!